Digital Era

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I worked as a planning associate with a media planning and advertising company, Adjetter Media Network Pvt Ltd. I gained a good amount of experience in devising digital marketing plan and proposal for various brands. I understood the various aspects of internet marketing and what plays a crucial role in making your brand successful on online platform.

Based on the insights from my experience and understanding of internet marketing, I developed following qualitative matrix. It has internet marketing aspects as rows and factors which are critical for success across these aspects as columns. A brand can access its internet marketing portfolio through this simple qualitative matrix. And, it can find out the gaps and opportunities to improve internet marketing strategy. Various factors emphasize on the synergy generated through the consistent approach across the row categories.

The idea behind this matrix is to understand the synergy among different aspects of internet marketing like social media, website, ads etc. Therefore the marketing effort is consistent and combined rather than individual and separate. Focus on synergy will decrease effort and maximize gains.

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Rows: These are the various aspects of internet marketing.

Columns: These are some important factors which I found critical for a successful internet marketing strategy based on my understanding of this area.

Cells: It describes how a particular aspect is related to the factors appearing in column and what is expected considering these factors as parameters.

Integration tries to address how well connected the overall marketing approach is? Is there sufficient interlinking and references among the separate channels and if yes how frequently, the brand utilizes them?

Relevance brings out the “Customer Focus” into the marketing strategy across various channels.

Brand Focus is something important to address. Every aspect of internet marketing should justify their content on how it is connected with the brand persona and fulfilling its mission.

Analytics tries to emphasize that a brand needs to leverage data to understand insights and therefore further improving their strategy.

Communication emphasizes the clarity and effectiveness of communication style. How well it is being adopted and appreciated by the target audience. Understanding and measuring the satisfaction level will give us insights on where to improve?

Do Right campaign by “Tata Capital” is a good example of integrated marketing campaign on internet.

They included a dedicated Microsite along with blogging, Facebook, Twitter and Youtube to promote the campaign. And they did it exactly right. The campaign was mainly targeted to extend the brand proposition “We only do what’s right for you”.

Microsite: Tata Capital dedicated a microsite for the purpose, which was the central point for the campaign. They published stories, blogs, Brand ambassador’s contribution on this website and introduced brand as well, hence capturing all the Do right activities on the microsite. http://doright.in/

Facebook: Tata Capital launched a Facebook app “Kids know best”. Where they invited kids to share their opinions on values and why should we follow them. The idea was to involve parents as well and spread the message that kids learn what they see. So, we elders need to do right things. It further emphasized brand proposition of Tata Capital as “We only do what’s right for you”.

Twitter: They used twitter handle to generate awareness, facilitate sharing and inform others about the campaign.

YouTube: Lots of videos were uploaded on the You Tube stream of Tata Capital. YouTube was used as platform to launch the contents for the campaigns.

How integrating offline and online media can help you run innovative campaigns? A perfect example is Coca cola wearable movie campaign “Put on a smile”. Coca Cola launched this campaign in 2013 and brought a fresh perspective into innovative campaigns area.

Starting from social media fans, company staffs and creative partners, they sent them all T-shirts with a Thank you note. Each T-shirt had a clipping of a movie printed on it.

Those fans and staffs were asked to wear those T shirts, take a photo and then share it with Coca cola. By collecting and combining all these images, Coca Cola made a movie, which they further promoted and shared across online platforms. They termed it as “Wearable Movie”.

I notice a following challenges in coming future as more and more companies will try to adopt the inbound strategy to satisfy the expectations of digital era.

Compelling content: As tough it is to make your website search relevant, tougher part is to create relevant content. Recognizing this challenge as well as the opportunity here, Coca Cola has come up with its 2020 vision through content marketing. They have coined “Liquid marketing”, the idea is to harness customer’s voice and to go for snowballing content generation.

Differentiation in the category: As in the coming future, all the brands will try to maximize their gain on internet marketing. They will try to connect to the customers and keep themselves differentiated from others in the same category. At the same time they should be talking similar and relevant to the product category to be noticed by the prospects. Therefore the style of communication will play an important role in near future.

Engagement verses Conversion: The focus will increase on conversions through engagement and association with the prospects. How to drive these prospects into consumers can be an important differentiating factor for a brand.

The approach evolved from the idea of shifting from less aggressive selling to increased focus on generating user’s interest in the product or the company. Putting in simple words – Make your business easily accessible to the prospects, catch their attention and convert them into customers.

Instead of selling or promoting your products to the consumers directly, you are creating content which is relevant and useful to them. The idea behind inbound marketing is to have continuous interaction with the prospects/consumers and at the end they will reward you with buying your product or promoting your business.

The platform and accessibility: Web 2.0 has changed the way marketers promoted their products and run the campaigns. Gone are the days when commercials are the only source to persuade consumers to make a purchase. Now the internet provides real time two way communication platform. It’s a platform where the brand as well as consumers can share their opinions. It has provided the accessibility to both the sides. Again, with the evolution of social media, consumers have a strong platform to raise their voice and share their experience with others. Looking at the cost side, this platform is far less expensive than the outbound marketing tools available for brands.

Changed consumer behavior: Now the consumers are well informed about the products or the category. Their accessibility to information has increased tremendously. Keeping the context in mind, it has become increasingly difficult to catch their attention through traditional outbound marketing approach. They have also become more expressive and willing to provide their opinion through social media. They like to share their views and experience about various products and services.

With the support of above arguments, it is easily understandable that inbound marketing methods are more effective and efficient in the digital era.